From a City on the Front Lines

So, it has been nearly a year since my return to Ukraine... my return to a life where the word "war" doesn't refer to some abstract concept going on "over there," but refers to the everyday reality of a horde of Satanic monsters living in a nation next door who believe they have the right to slaughter your neighbors for daring to be more advanced and civilized than they are. I was originally assigned to Dnipro, but Russia destroyed the middle school I was supposed to teach at. Then they destroyed the primary school I was reassigned to. After that, I was reassigned to Lviv, where I've still seen three times when a Russian drone struck the school I worked at. I haven't seen a single Russian missile or drone hit a single military or government target the entire time I've been here, but I've seen plenty of schools and hospitals blown away.
I've witnessed death. I've buried children from my own classes, murdered by Russian drone strikes that specifically targeted schools and parks, strikes which convicted sex-offender @vp-freelance and his lover, Jeffrey Epstein's most @valued-customer, insist were legitimate retaliation against Ukraine for daring to destroy the weapons Russia was using to kill other civilians.
Meanwhile, in addition to burying actual Human Beings, I've buried Russians.

Thousands of Russians.

Because on days when I do not have classes I work as a volunteer for an organization whose primary job is to identify and repatriate the corpses of dead Russian invaders back to their parasitic families in the third world wasteland they call home for burial. Identifying them isn't always possible considering the condition most of the mangled bodies are in (there are plenty where the only way we can even tell it's a Russian is by the remains of the uniform), but unlike Russians, Ukrainians are civilized so our organization does always try.
However, more often than not, we find that either the family does not believe we have their relative's corpse because they actually insist there are no Russian troops in Ukraine (believe it or not, plenty of orcs are that willfully stupid), or they do not want the corpse back at all. Hard to blame them for the latter, really. Who would want a dead war criminal shipped back to them with a notice saying "here, get rid of this?" In those cases, the carcasses are buried here in Ukraine. Frankly I would have opted to feed them to pigs but then again I suppose even pigs have standards of what they will and won't eat, and considering how bad a living Russian smells I can hardly blame the pigs if they find dead ones unpalatable.
And to be blunt, one of the biggest problems we have is that we're running out of plots of land far enough from civilization that we can bury a battalion of dead Russian soldiers per week there without having to worry about dogs digging up the disease-ridden carcasses. I have suggested, only half-jokingly, that we should find some museum employees who know how to build trebuchets and start lobbing the carcasses back across the lines to their hivemates, but my supervisor reminded me that Russia's foreign minister, Sir Gay Lapdog would probably call a UN session to cry that this was "an act of bio-terrorism."

In any case, it has been a year in which I've witnessed Ukraine's righteous valor and Russia's demonic, subhuman depravity both on an almost daily basis.
So why haven't I written?
Hmm? Why haven't I told Ukraine's story, as I've seen it?
...To be perfectly blunt, anger. I've found myself so pissed off at the world for being ill-informed enough to need that story told, so irritated that the world has swallowed the lies fed to them by the genocidal mass of putrescence calling itself the Russian Federation, that I've been unable to be calm enough to write about it. I've watched the US willingly elect a president who, though he might have been the right man for the job a decade ago, is now a broken and withered, drooling husk who sees the world through the lens of the 1990's. I've witnessed Hungary and Slovakia (former Russian satellites who were never worthy of EU membership and were only allowed to join as an act of kindness by the more developed nations of Europe who took pity on them) echo the lies of their former colonial overlord in order to justify the Muscovite Empire's war crimes. Again and again I've watched the so-called "defenders of Democracy" on BOTH sides of the Atlantic take the side of a mass murdering psychopath and tell his victims "it will all be over quickly if you'll lie down and die quietly." And each time I've witnessed Ukrainian heroism in the face of Russian barbarism, each time I've witnessed Ukraine punch the Russian bear right in the nose when the world said they had no chance and should surrender to it, I've watched the Western world castigate Ukraine for daring to defend themselves.

In short, I have watched the world, especially the West, fail.

They have failed, by refusing to confront Russia even though Ukraine, with far less power and resources, has proven able to do so. "Yeah, but going to a wartime economy is inconvenient."
They have failed, by willingly swallowing what any sensible person can see are lies. "Why should I believe 14 million Ukrainian eye-witnesses? This Russian-state-media source says on the other hand..."
They have failed by thinking "why is it my problem?" When Russia openly announces every day that their intent is to build a global empire.
And as I watched, wondering "how is a civilized world capable of turning a blind eye to Russia's level of wickedness," it hit me. It finally hit me, though I've heard it from pulpits all my life and never understood it.
"Because this is NOT a civilized world."
This has been a wicked world for the entirety of Humanity's presence in it. So how could I be surprised when the same twisted, barbaric race (Humanity) that has repeatedly ignored the brutality of the Shi-Na Minzoku, now chose to turn a blind eye to the crimes of Gog (Russia)?
Well, it's summer. My school is out for the summer (cue Alice Cooper), and I'm spending my summer in my old home, Kharkiv. A city the Russians have tried to break (and are still trying to break), which still stands strong in spite of being shelled every day by Russian troops. A city the Russians talk of "liberating" (read "reducing to rubble and enslaving the population") every day, which refuses to submit. A city where Ukraine's Independence Day is a bigger festival of revelry than Mardi Gras is in New Orleans. A city whose continued existence, joyously bedecked in Ukrainian blue and gold while nearly every bar and restaurant has recently taken up the practice of putting Russian flags at the bottom of the urinals, is a massive middle finger pointed right into the core of Neo-Genghizid Russia. And in my year back in Ukraine (including spending last August and this summer as well right on the front lines in Kharkiv), I've realized something about Ukraine.

I never should have left.

Originally, my plan was to stay. But my private school, which I built with my own hands, was destroyed by a Russian missile. Then my house was. With my work destroyed and my students murdered, I tried to join up and fight, but the AFU didn't need me. So with my business destroyed and no way to join the fight, I left. It's now plain to me that this was a mistake. So, Like Jonah returning from the belly of the whale, I am back where the Almighty put me, doing the work He sent me to do: educating the young here, and correcting the ignorance of the misinformed back home.